


A Backdrop of Blue

by anomalation



Category: Damar Series - Robin McKinley
Genre: Big Sister Aerin, Eldritch Creature Aerin, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-11
Updated: 2018-06-11
Packaged: 2019-05-20 19:06:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14900252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anomalation/pseuds/anomalation
Summary: Why would an ageless, immortal Aerin take interest in Hari over everything else in the last half dozen centuries? How did those centuries change her? Why might Luthe speak to Harry of the Aerin he knew in the past tense when she was immortal? An attempted answer.Title from Blue Lips by Regina Spektor.





	A Backdrop of Blue

Aerin was not quite mortal. She had been for quite some time. And she’d hoped, in her younger years, that the time would numb things. The pain from losses she’d suffered, the dizzying rush of her _kelar_ , the searing, all-consuming love for her people, her family. But decades past, and Aerin felt exactly the same.

She lost Tor after eighty years. Lost him, like he slipped through her hands. Part of her always thought _kelar_ might save him, or help her keep him somehow. After everything, she thought she might get to keep just him. Instead, she watched him take his last breaths, felt the essence of him fade, and then, was expected to go on without him.

For a year, she tried. She directed all her grief at her duties, stayed up most nights answering requests and addressing disputes until she couldn’t keep her eyes open any longer. And it worked, to an extent. Damar never ran so smoothly, all her sols assured her. But Aerin’s heart burned hotter every day, her _kelar_ bursting out in increasingly unpredictable displays, and her body refused to age.

That cut deepest. She’d watched Tor waste away, years taking their inexorable toll on him while she didn’t change. That was unbearable. It was even worse, of course, when she didn’t have him at all. She was trapped.

And everyone, to the person, told her time would heal this. They seemed to believe time would eventually work on her physical form as well. Maybe she should’ve known better than to trust them, mortals, but she’d wanted to. So she’d tried, she put her head down and worked, and waited for herself to change.

Luthe laughed when she was recounting this to him. “You might as well have been waiting for the moon to fall from the sky,” he said. “Oh, Aerin.”

“You didn’t tell me what you did,” Aerin retorted crossly. “Not really. I didn’t know.”

“This has nothing to do with mortality, dear one,” Luthe told her with a smile. “Your father waited for years for you to change your mind, to no avail. Tor knew better. Your will is a relentless force. I imagine you’ve never come up against anything like it.”

The last time she’d tried to change herself to desperately, she’d eaten a branch of surka and choked her _kelar_ for a decade. She had to admit with that in mind that she should’ve known her heart would never recover.

She ruled without Tor for almost a year. Barely any time at all, for all that it reeled like it stretched on forever. She meant to make it longer, but then she went into the stables late one night for a midnight ride, and instead fainted, and slept for three days. Doctors and healers came - none could cure her raging fever or wake her. Her children returned home, prepared of the worst, and the sound of her daughter’s voice opened Aerin’s eyes for her. It was said that for a moment they were a brilliant, molten gold.

Aerin _loved_ her children. Every time she laid eyes on them, she felt more. Whenever they weren’t in her sight they were on her mind. She lost her breath when she held them in her arms, cried when she heard their first words. Her children were smart, and brave, and so mortal she couldn’t bear it. She held grandchildren, and their children, and generations after that. They never grew less precious.

But her children. The year after Tor died. Aerin had trouble staying firmly in one time.

Corin and Elspeth gave their mother no choice; they were returning home with their spouses to take over. Not everything; they weren’t forcing Aerin out of power. Just lightning the load. “You deserve time to grieve,” Corin told Aerin. She didn’t have the heart to tell him she’d have the rest of her life for that.

So Aerin ceded some of her responsibilities. She made appearances at major holidays and feasts, spent evenings with her family and tried to cherish those days.

Eighteen months after Tor died, to the day, Aerin left the city. Her eldest, Elspeth, was crowned the day before, making Corin first sola. They were competent, beloved, with their father’s gift for diplomacy. They would make excellent rulers, and Damar could forget all about Aerin, daughter of a witch. Everyone could more on. Or maybe if the country did, Aerin hoped she could too.

She didn’t leave with much. A horse, one of Talat’s line. Not Talat because he, too, was dead. Gonturan rode with her, in its hilt at her side. A foltzsa came with them for the first part of the journey, loping alongside for hours before wandering off. Aerin hardly noticed. She knew her way by heart.

Luthe was concerned. “You looked lifeless,” he’d tell her of that day. “I should’ve warned you.”

Warning or no, nothing could take away the pain. It was all-consuming, especially when she saw Luthe was as untouched by time as she was. More than once, she’d wished to destroy his entire home by the lake, with its proud serenity. She thought about burning it to the ground, feeling the malevolent sear of hot flames across her skin as she burned with it. But her kelar was uncooperative as ever and refused to destroy anything, and she couldn’t bring herself to do it otherwise.

The only life she felt was holding Gonturan. Sword in hand, she could spend hours hacking at dummies or sparring with Luthe. He wasn’t half as good a partner as Tor, but Gonturan still sang in her hand the same. A little dimmer perhaps, but Aerin could hardly blame it.

She stayed with Luthe until she couldn’t bear him any longer, and then she left. Saddled up her horse, packed her few things, and rode for Damar.

The guards at the city gates recognized her, but seemed uneasy. _Daughter of a witch,_ Aerin heard, though they didn’t speak.

Aerin found her children not as she left them. Elspeth had a child, walking around the castle, and Corin’s wife was newly expecting. “Rather fast,” Aerin said when she heard.

Corin frowned. “Mother, you’ve been gone for five years,” he said. “Roxanna and I have been married for seven."

Five years. Aerin repeated it to herself over the next few days, to try and ground herself in time. Five. She was with Luthe for five years and not a thing within her changed.

She held her grandchild close as long as they’d let her, before they’d struggle away. There were no great grandchildren yet, but that would come soon enough. For now, she had her family as it was.

Corin sat her down one night, when the wind whipped in sharply from the north. They sat by a fire, and he took her hand. “Mother,” he said. She could hardly look him in the eyes - they were so much like Tor’s. “You aren’t aging,” he said.

She could’ve laughed. “No,” she agreed. “I’m not.”

“Why? Is it a curse?” he asked, and she did laugh then, a rough cough.

“Yes,” she said. “It is.” And she held onto his hand and told him about Maur, Luthe, and the lake and the life she was given that she never asked for. She felt it all over again, that sensation of being trapped in his body that refused to change.

When she finished, she saw the horror in his eyes and felt it in herself as well, fear rising in the back of her throat. “Will you ever get any older?” Corin asked.

“I don’t know,” she said, and thought of Luthe. “I suspect not.”

“Could someone kill you?”

“So far, they’ve been unsuccessful.”

Corin gave her a disapproving look, the same one he used since the cradle. “Are you joking about being immortal, mother?” he said. “Because I must say I’m not entirely sure that’s proper.”

“Nonsense,” she said. “I’ve got all the time in the world to be serious. I only have so much time with you.”

He hugged her after she said that, and for once she was glad to be so battle-ready because she could hug him so tightly. “I’ll tell Elspeth,” he said. “If that’s alright.”

“Sure,” Aerin said. “But it wouldn’t be popular with all of Damar.”

Corin gave her another look. “People will notice.”

“Let’s wait until then.”

He didn’t agree, but he didn’t argue. Aerin recalled Luthe, laughing at her stubbornness, and concluded her son was a smart man. He also had a point. Aerin didn’t look a day over twenty-five. That year, she celebrated her 107th birthday.

She thought often of her parents. Arlbeth, sad and quiet and firm. And her mother, or the distant imagination of her that Aerin held in her mind. The red hair and paleness and _kelar_ running through her blood. Her father outlived her mother for close to twenty years, and Aerin felt the pain of those years now. She also knew pain her parents would never know. Neither of them had to outlive their children.

Corin died first. His wife was pregnant with their third child when he passed. Elspeth was the only person Aerin wanted to speak to; she could stand the grandchildren, the great-grandchildren Elspeth’s children were having. She loved her whole family, of course, but her losses burned so sharply, a bottomless pit in the center of her heart with those flames at the center.

“Your son is first sola now,” Aerin said when she thought of it. “How old is he?”

“Thirty-one,” Elspeth said. She wept often. Aerin couldn’t seem to cry at all. “Don’t leave for so long,” her daughter begged. “Stay. If you have to go, of course you can but. Please stay, mother.”

Aerin looked at her daughter, at her greying hair and the lines around her eyes, and there was no way she could turn her down. She stayed the longest since Tor, for eight years. Until her daughter died too, and then she couldn’t stay any longer. Even for her grandchildren, who loved her and asked no questions about her apparent youth. She just couldn’t. So she saddled a new horse, dug Gonturan out of its wrappings, strapped it across the back of its saddle, and left.

Luthe was waiting for her, as always. Patient and understanding, a little melancholy. His face changed as little as hers, and was the last thing she wanted to see. So she left that night, while Luthe slept.

Aerin lost track of time soon after that. Years passed without consequence - or she thought they were years, but may have been decades. Sometimes she was with Luthe. Mostly she was not. The sight of his clear blue eyes, his perfect blonde hair that looked as it ever looked, hurt sharper than any wound. So Aerin wandered to the north, where once her detestable uncle held control. Without him, the various assorted demons and hideous creatures were weak and divided. No threat to anyone, least of all Aerin, who felt nothing.

She killed when she needed to, but never with any passion. She’d seen too much death to be affected, particularly by these pests. She wandered, slowly cleared the north of pests, and she barely noticed. Luthe had to tell her.

“The north cowers before you, Aerin-sol,” he said when he saw her.

Aerin thought only of how sore and tired she was, now that she was standing still. She couldn’t remember when she slept last. It could’ve been days, or months. “Do they?” she said, barely able to muster the words.

“What’s left of them. Demons will be telling their spawn of the fire-haired terror that wiped out a generation, without breaking a sweat.” Luthe looked like he might want to embrace her. Instead he just smiled, kind and understanding. “You’ve done Damar a great service. Again.”

“And as it was last time, it wasn’t on purpose.”

Luthe allowed that to be the joke that it wasn’t. He fell into step with her and they walked together, down the shore of the Lake of Dreams toward his house. “You left on a horse,” he finally observed.

“It passed,” Aerin answered. “So I walked.”

“Aerin.”

“That is still my name, to my knowledge.”

He stopped her with a hand on her shoulder. “Aerin,” he repeated. “You can’t grieve forever.”

“I can,” she retorted. “If I want. I have forever at my disposal and no other plans.”

“It will drive you mad,” he protested. “It may have already.”

“Madness is a family trait,” Aerin said bitterly. “It may have always been in the stars for me.”

“Aerin!” Luthe said a third time, his voice as loud as a thunderclap, and his eyes glinted sharp with his _kelar_. He’d never shouted at her like that before, and Aerin paused. She looked at him, and for once felt firmly in the present. “Whether you squander it or not, you have been given a gift,” he said.

“Some gift,” she answered louder. “Hell can take it back, I don’t want it.” 

“Hell didn’t give it to you,” Luthe said, now dangerously soft.

“I’m well aware,” she said, and she felt her _kelar_ rising in a terrible wave. At the moment, she didn’t care who was caught up in it. She let the _kelar_ shake the very ground beneath her, just for a moment, before she put it in check. “How long have I been gone,” she said flatly.

“Long.”

“How long?”

He wouldn’t say. So Aerin turned on her heel and kept walking, down from the mountains into Damar. Her legs were exhausted, but she could feel it for the first time in a while. How tired she was, how her very bones seemed to ache. She supposed feeling it was better than not.

Maur’s desert was larger than she remembered. Hills, leading to the mountains, weren’t earth anymore but shifting sand, and the there was just so much more sand than there was before. It was something to behold, in its own way.

She came across a camp before she reached Damar. The tents were odd, large and unfamiliar to her, but the horses were as familiar as her own hand. Talat’s line, without a doubt. She saw a floppy forelock just like his on a horse that was patchy, white and brown.

A man came out of the largest tent, with two others trailing him. They were dressed for the desert, in wrappings that protected from the sun while remaining light. She saw things that reminded her of the Damar people she knew; their features for one, skin still dark as cinnamon sticks, pieces of embroidery on their sleeves, and the belted tunics under their robes were Damarian for certain.

“What do you want here?” the first one asked her. His speech was accented oddly.

“Is this Damar?” she said.

The men looked at each other suspiciously. She knew she had to be quite the sight. She didn’t age, but her northern skin still darkened in the sun, and her scars were etched as deeply as ever. Her clothes were tattered too, since she hadn’t gotten the chance to change at Luthe’s. “Damar?” one repeated.

“Yes,” she said hesitantly. Perhaps they called it something new now. How long had it been?

“Damar is spread by the four winds,” it sounded like the leader said, but surely that couldn’t be right.

“What about the city?” Aerin said.

“Overtaken by sand,” another answered. “As every child has known for two generations. Where do you hail from?”

“The North,” Aerin answered truly, though it would’ve hurt Tor to hear her say it. “But I rode with Damarians some years ago. How long has it been since the rule of Elspeth?”

“Elspeth?” one man repeated loudly, and Aerin knew she’d said the wrong thing then. It had been so long since she spoke to anyone but Luthe. Two of the men put hands on the hilts of their swords, and Aerin considered Gonturan where it sat on her hip. It felt warmer as she thought of drawing it, but she didn’t.

They took her to their elder, a small, wrinkled woman with snow white hair and eyes that looked, unseeing, at everything before her. She sat in a smaller tent, on a pile of thick rugs. Aerin didn’t need to be told to remove her shoes. And the moment the old woman touched her, she knew who Aerin was. Her eyes shone gold with _kelar_ , and her sight was truer without her eyes.

With that approval, Aerin was accepted into the group. She was given her own tent to sleep in, food to eat. The food was just like the food on the road that she remembered. They served malak with every meal. But things had changed as well.

History was no longer stored in books. It traveled in words, which travelled easier, and passed down through the mothers and daughters. From the women, she learned what happened to Damar in the hundreds of years since she saw it. 

Maur’s desert had spread, slow but sure, and sandstorms began to batter at the city walls. Feeding the horses required more grass than existed in one place, so families took to migrating with their herds. And, slowly, the rest of Damar joined them. The hills held most of them now, though some went south for better climates.

They still spoke of her and Tor, of Gonturan shining blue. As a people, their history was horses and _kelar_ , and the land. They were proud of remaining, and Aerin was proud too. These were her people. She loved them, and for the first time she felt like she knew why she was alive. 

She stayed for a few weeks. She got know the few dozen people in this tribe very well. And as she got to know them, she saw pieces of her beloved in them. Tor’s eyes, Tor’s nose. His smile, on the young man in charge of the horses. And, rarely, she saw herself, as well. A large nose, or dark hair with reddish tint to it.

When she couldn’t bring herself to stay any longer, she made for another tribe. Her new friends gave her a horse to ride, a spectacular creature with long, smooth strides, and galloping across the dunes was the most she felt since she lost Tor.

So for around a year, she travelled through the hills and met most of her people, in all their different groups and tribes across the sands. Sometimes she was recognized again. Sometimes the mere fact that she came on a familiar horse was enough to get her a few nights’ stay.

She acquired pieces of this new Damar too. An outer robe first, to protect from the sand. A head wrap next, after she got caught in a sandstorm and lost half the skin on her face. It came back, of course, though the bedrest and greasy ointment made her think of those years she spent recovering from eating surka. The head wrap protected her after that. And she got new soft boots, better suited for the sand and riding without stirrups.

The laprun trials were entirely new to her, but they felt born out of her own heart. A whole week of riding and fighting, fighting for the right to protect Damar with swords. Aerin competed, out of curiosity and also to put to rest their qualms about her carrying Gonturan without a sash giving her permission. She fought using one of their swords, rode on one of their steeds, and though both felt unfamiliar in her hands she won handily. She was laprun-minta, the best of her year, and she gave a false name. It was enough to win, she didn’t need the added complication of being their immortal hero. It was nice, just to pretend for a while that she was this new breed of Damarian, riding and baking under the desert sun.

She sweated out her worries for a couple years, riding those lovely horses and feeling so different, so herself. Finally, she felt ready to return to Luthe, but only after she set one thing to rights.

Gonturan sang softly as she pulled it out of its sheath, and the king stepped back. “No man should wield this blade,” she said. “A female hero only. A _damalur-sol_.”

“As you wish,” he said, perhaps too afraid to disagree. He knew who she was, and what that sword had done. “Won’t you need it, Aerin-sol?”

“No,” she said. “Thank you.”

She spent the next century or so with Luthe. He’d never been so glad to see her as the evening she made those final steps into his valley. She looked foreign to him, in her desert wraps. And she saw herself in his eyes, too, blue eyes snapping bright in her tanned face. When she unwrapped her hair, sand fell out.

It wasn’t any easier to be herself with Luthe, but she chipped away at it, over the years. She learned, without Gonturan, to be more in touch with her _kelar_. It was an uncontrollable force, undoubtedly, but the more attention she spent on it, the more she could feel it rising in her heart, the better she could float on top of it.

She loved Luthe, but it was hard to truly care. He would be around until the sun fell out of the sky, and so would she. There was enough time for Luthe. So she went wandering again, to the east, the south, then around to the west.

Aerin was far west when the Outlanders came, the invaders from across the seas. When she heard about them, her _kelar_ broke the very earth she was standing on. It was unthinkable that her people were being driven from their homes by these intruders. And though Aerin didn’t share the same distrust of those with light skin as her people did, she agreed that these light-skinned were bad news.

Fifty years too late, Aerin finally saw them. She walked across the desert on her own, to one of the outposts, and observed them for a few days, her eyes sharpened by _kelar_.

They were soft, accustomed to comfort and ease, burning pink when they were in the sun for five minutes as she used to. They didn’t fight with swords, but with strange batons that shot metal into their targets. And their horses were weak, cowardly things. She pitied the horses and hated the men.

Her people - her beautiful, brave people - never gave up. Some used violence, some used other means. She didn't join them. Damar was theirs now, and she was having trouble remaining firmly in one time. She saw Luthe and asked after Talat once, and Luthe's face was enough to remind her. But sometimes she'd ride out of the hills looking for the walls of Damar, and sometimes she'd find them, looking just as she left them. That didn't happen near as often as she liked. Mostly, Damar remained lost in the shifting sands, ever beyond her grasp, and so she kept searching.

It was increasingly hard to tell dreaming from reality. Her dreams were brightened by _kelar_ , and the world didn't feel familiar, not quite. Luthe was in both. Tor was only in one, that was a hint she could rely on. But she didn't always want to wake, so she'd stay there, dreaming, just to say another word to his dear face. She looked for him everywhere, she couldn't help it. Even in the sandy tents of her newly nomadic people, she searched for him in the faces of their kings.

She remembered Corlath, once she saw him. He had Tor's precise coloring, his eyes, but his nose and mouth were hers. The nose was large, and the mouth prone to running faster than his brain. At his laprun, he was quite the target. Every eligible young man and woman wanted to cut his sash, just to shut him up. Aerin watched, face covered, on the sidelines as Corlath bested everyone he was matched up against. She thought she saw the glint of gold in his eyes once, and she wished as hard as she could that whatever _kelar_ he had, it would take it easy on him.

In her dreams, she saw Tor riding a dun stallion, cutting a blood red sash on a faceless rider. She wasn't there, she was watching from above - and then she was the rider, she was Tor, she was the sand and the sky and she watched from the crowd. And then, she was looking at a blonde-haired girl, young but already up to Aerin's shoulder, in unfamiliar clothes. They looked at each other. Aerin opened her mouth, but then the dream faded all together. But she saw one more thing; a vision of Corlath and a task he knew he must complete, and she smiled.

She was with Luthe later. Or maybe it was earlier; she wasn't wearing the nomadic Damarian clothes. Her clothes changed often, though, so she couldn’t be sure. “How long before I have control of my _kelar_ as you do?” she asked.

“It was many a hundred years of study,” Luthe began, noncommittally as he always was on the subject.

“I’ve had many a hundred years,” she said. “I’m only marginally better at determining its will.”

“Are you?” he inquired mildly.

“You know I am,” she replied. “Never have I called the _kelar_ and it answered, the way it does you.”

“Perhaps you call too often.”

Aerin glared at him. “I didn’t ask to be answered in riddles,” she said.

“I don’t answer in riddles to confound,” Luthe countered. “But the answers are riddles more often than not. _Kelar_ is not a pet to be tamed.”

“I’ve heard that before,” Aerin said tightly. “It’s grown stale. Have you anything new to tell me?”

Luthe looked at her in something near surprise, common when he looked at her but uncommon all the same. “I had forgotten the harshness in your voice,” he said. “Is your sense of self returning?”

“To your dismay, evidently.”

He laughed at that, and the world did grow more colorful at the sound. Aerin had nearly forgotten how musical his laughter was, how long it had been since she’d heard it. “If I seem dismayed, it’s only in seeming. I’ve missed you sorely, these few years.”

It was a joke, and one Aerin finally had the wherewithal to smile at. She did like to smile, she found. She’d always liked it. Tor could always make her laugh.“Perhaps I am returning,” she said. “As my people are.”

“May their invaders tremble in fear,” Luthe said. “Do you wish to harness your _kelar_ for these purposes?”

“No,” Aerin said. “I wish to understand myself better.”

Luthe nodded, and she watched him change his mind. “It isn’t part of you,” he said. “The _kelar_. It’s separate. An entity of its own. If you wish it to help you, you must help it in kind.”

“Help it,” she repeated. “For what does _kelar_ want?”

“We cannot possibly understand.”

“Then why should I help?”

“For your own ends, I couldn’t know.” But a smile was hidden in his great golden beard, and Aerin answered it with her own.

She knew, of course, what she wanted. It couldn’t hurt to listen. So she kept an ear out, and when the _kelar_ urged her to head south, she did. South, she met a small tribe who needed help defending against Outlander encroachers, so she helped. She took one of their curious short bows and fought with the help of her _kelar_ , and her people lived another day. When it took her North, she went. And when it left her altogether, she prayed she’d done enough to please it, so it might please her soon.

Dreams increasingly merged with reality, and Aerin stopped trying to tell the difference. It didn’t matter. She could lose no time, since it all was hers. And dreams told her more than her waking moments. Or maybe they weren’t dreams, maybe the _kelar_ took her between worlds. She did things sometimes. She worked in visions and impulses. Sometimes, she _was_ the _kelar,_ working through her people. And she lost all sense of time then, but she no longer felt adrift either.

It was a dream, or perhaps a vision when she saw the blonde-haired girl again. Or maybe this was the first real time, and the dream had happened after. It matters little. Aerin looked upon her, upon Corlath beside her, and learned from her _kelar_ what had transpired. And she smiled then, for she knew that whatever reason the girl was brought here, it was to save Damar. And that would not be easy. Without knowing why, she reached out, only to have the girl fade from view. She was not concerned. The _kelar_ knew what it was doing.

Aerin came back whenever she could in time for the laprun. As much as she was aware of any fixed point in time, she knew when the lapruns were and tried to watch them. She kept a headwrap on, hid her hair and watched from the edges. The people faded in the sun as their tents did, but the ritual remained, and she did. Every year, a young man or sometimes woman would emerge the victor much as she had. Sometimes there were fewer competing - these were the earlier years, she thought, after Damar was taken by the Outlanders. But more often, the competition was fierce - these the years before the invasions, or long after as her people grew strong again.

She had a sense of when she was towards the end, when she saw Corlath. He was hard to miss, as tall as he'd grown. His height must be inherited from her, she thought; Damarians were never particularly towering.

And then she saw the laprun minta, her long blonde hair whipping in the desert wind. Aerin felt her _kelar_ quicken her pulse, warming her hands, and she knew it was the girl. This girl who was not of Damar nor of the North, but from a foreign land, this invader, somehow, was brimming with _kelar_. The very air shook with it.

The crowd was dispersing, gathering around fires for a meal, but Aerin stayed where she was, hands tucked under her arms. Her legs shook under her. She was taken completely over with two disparate desires - to take this girl up by the shoulders and look her in the eyes and know her, or to run. For the first time in centuries, she was intimately aware of where she was in time, and the knowledge burned her throat. Her _kelar_ was silent.

She left, but didn’t go far. Something told her she shouldn’t go far. And she wondered if Corlath’s _kelar_ told him anything more than what she knew.

Her own _kelar_ soon took over again, and she saw the foreign girl in what she thought was a vision. Her doubt rang through their bond, and Aerin couldn’t help but try and comfort her with a smile. “Gonturan will do well for you, I think, child, as she did well for me. You can feel it in the way she hangs in your hand, can you not?” she asked, speaking much like she did to her own children. How she missed her children. How strange it was, to see a girl with no Damar blood and feel the same urge to defend.

The girl merely nodded.

“Gonturan is far older than I am, you know; she was given to me with the weight of her own years and legend already upon her. I never knew all that she might lead her bearer into - and as it was, I learned more than enough.” Her uncle’s face rose in the back of her mind, laughing. Aerin replaced it with Tor’s, though that was hardly better. So instead she looked at the face in front of her, totally unfamiliar to her. Just a girl. Not yet past her twenty-fifth year, if Aerin knew still how people aged. This was just a girl. So Aerin did her best to explain.

“Gonturan has her own sense of honor, child. But she is not human, and you must not trust her as a human; remember it. She is a true friend, but a friend with thoughts of her own, and the thoughts of others are dangerous.”

Aerin paused, and the dream began to end. She was well-acquainted with her dreams, less-so with the world that she’d once given everything to save. Now this girl fought for Damar though fear pulsed strongly through her every thought, and Aerin loved her for it. “What luck I had, may it go with you,” she said, and meant it.

As she began walking, a compulsion overtook her, and she walked North. And North, she saw a collection of demons unlike any she’d seen, all come together. But her _kelar_ urged patience.

It was just her luck, of course, that the blonde followed. Aerin couldn’t be sure how much time passed, but it felt short. Weeks, perhaps. They passed like days to her now. In mere weeks, the blonde and a mismatched group of compatriots joined her, though they saw her not. Just them, to defend against the largest host of devils Aerin ever encountered. The girl wasn’t even wearing her sash. A collection of foreign people, a few of Aerin’s own, some foltzsa, and then, some of the Damarians who took to the hilltops after the desert spread, those that even Aerin had found not. Damar was united against the North, and it warmed Aerin’s heart. She’d had to fight alone. She was glad the blonde girl did not.

Aerin knew the battle would be fierce. She fought, at the edge of the battlefield, against demons on their strange horses. But she fought without _kelar_ \- it didn’t offer help, and she didn’t yet ask. The time wasn’t right, she thought, and something in Luthe’s voice urged her to wait for another moment.

She saw the blonde face down the Northern leader from several furloughs away, her eyes sharpened by _kelar_. Saw golden horse and white meet in a furious battle. Gonturan called out to her from across the field, its notes dulled in an unexperienced hand. Aerin missed it, but she knew her time with it was past.

The Outlander’s forces regrouped, and Aerin moved back as well. She watched them from a cliffside, the northern wind bringing her snatches of their conversation. She didn’t know the tongue; it sounded strange, nasal and unfamiliar. She heard their names. It was clear, too, that they were planning. It was even more clear that they’d have no chance.

She felt rather than saw when _kelar_ took over the girl and compelled her to climb. Hari - Aerin had overheard her name and made particular note of it. Aerin watched her, watched as Hari reached the summit and wrenched Gonturan into the air. Then the buzz of _kelar_ filled the air, like the moment preceding a lightning strike, and Aerin knew this was it. The moment Hari had been chosen for.

It was no surprise when blue light flooded the air, when Hari began calling out in the old Damarian language, the one no one spoke any longer, or when a monumental force plunged the cliffside into the pass, blocking it and crushing the armies. That was no surprise at all. Aerin just listened to this Outlander girl calling upon _kelar_ by name, asking for help from Corlath, his ancestors, and so Aerin was called upon in this prayer. Aerin was part of it, lending her energy to this, the final stand of a land divided but not lost. It must not fail. It could not. And it did not; she felt her son Corlath there too, holding Hari up as she saved his land.

Better than anyone, Aerin knew what a flood of _kelar_ took from a hero, so before the light faded she made for the slope Hari stood on. She found her sprawled on the ground, and observed for the first time that Hari had eyes just like Aerin’s in shape, that her hair tended bronze in the shadows. She couldn’t help but smile at her. “This is what one mad Damarian on a Hill horse would have done; rather like something I once did,” she said. And she tried to warn Hari, she did, about the fickle fame heroism lent to its victims. She didn’t learn very much, but she did learn that.

Hari was too exhausted to take much of it in. She had mind only for one thing, the thing she said. “Corlath,” she murmured, and Aerin smoothed her hand over Hari’s bright hair.

“Corlath is waiting for you,” Aerin said, for he was. And then she left, because Hari’s people were coming for her and Aerin needed no further conferred glory.

She felt a jolt when Gonturan was held by a man - an Outlander man, no less - and smiled. Gonturan could not be invaded, nor bargained with. And another jolt too, when Hari and Corlath met again, their _kelar_ shouting in a glorious confirmation of fate. And it must’ve been truly important, for never had someone else’s gift caused such a reaction in her own heart. But never had she taken such an interest in someone as she did in Hari and Corlath, her son.

Later she thought she felt Hari groping blindly for the same power, hoping to save the lives of those who protected their king. The call was wordless, but Aerin needed no words to understand and she lent her strength willingly. She felt no pain which made it easy, but Hari did and embraced it just the same.

That was when Aerin knew; her land was still hers, and would always be hers. As long as there were people who would stand in the gap, and somehow Aerin felt there would always be someone to stand in the gap. These were, after all, a people descended from her and Tor, and all the people she’d known and loved before she became this. This instrument of fate and will that was no longer human, not quite. It was strange, but it was growing on her.

Hari repayed her by naming a daughter after her. Aerin met the child some time later - she knew it had been some time because the child was nearly of age, and followed by two others, both of whom could walk. Aerin remembered very little of children, but she knew that meant it had been some time. And Hari looked older as well, with hair braided out of the way and years clearly written on her body. Aerin envied that, but only for a moment that was lost in the wind.

It was a strange meeting, to be sure. Aerin walked into Luthe’s valley as usual, only to find the royal family of Damar there, as well. It should have been no surprise. It was one just the same.

The surprise on their faces was nearly enough to make her laugh. Corlath, who never knowingly saw her, the children who didn’t know who she was, and then Hari, who knew her all too well.

Aerin smiled at her after a moment, and Hari finally smiled back. Immediately, she drew Gonturan and presented Aerin the handle. “I believe this is yours,” she said, in flawless Damarian. “I appreciate the loan.”

“Keep it,” Aerin said. “I’m not Damar’s hero any more.”

Hari snorted. “Nor am I,” she said. “Most of it was an accident.”

“Just as it was for me,” Aerin told her. “Keep it, and give it to your daughter, that she may carry it with honor.”

Corlath found his tongue at last, and he fell to one knee. “Aerin-sol,” he said. “It is an honor.”

“Rise, child,” Aerin said. “No more an honor than your marriage, I’m sure. Her heroism is much more recent, and not yet legend.”

The child Aerin looked little like her. She had deep tan skin, even here where the sun didn’t beat down as it did in the desert. Her hair was like cornsilk. Still, there was something in her chin, in the tilt of her head. In how she continued to stand when her father knelt, and looked the elder Aerin stubbornly in the eyes. And for a brief moment, gold flashed in her young eyes.

There was no reason to fear. Damar would be in good hands for a while longer.


End file.
